An untold amount of "biological evidence" linked to New York City crimes dating back decades was destroyed or damaged in a raging inferno that devoured an NYPD warehouse off the Brooklyn waterfront Tuesday, authorities say.
The fire, which broke out around 10:40 a.m. at the Erie Basin Auto Pound in Red Hook, a sprawling warehouse on Columbia Street, left a half-dozen first responders and two civilians hurt -- and sent up towering black smoke plumes so thick some confused New Yorkers thought the blaze had started in Manhattan.
It escalated to three alarms within about 30 minutes, and roughly 150 fire department members were at the scene through early afternoon. Twenty people, a mix of NYPD staffers and contractors, were said to be inside the warehouse when the inferno started.
It wasn't immediately clear what sparked the blaze, and the investigation could take some time, though investigators said they know it started on a shelf that stored evidence. Firefighters were forced to withdraw from the interior early because of the intense flames and combustible material, as well as the threat of collapse. One section of the warehouse, which may have had hundreds of e-bikes in it, did fall, officials said.
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A total of eight people -- three firefighters, three EMS members and two civilians -- were hurt in the fire, but all are expected to be OK, FDNY Chief of Department John Hodgens said.
"This building is not really a very sturdy type of building. It's a metal building with trust construction, which has a large collapse potential," said Hodgens.
There was no estimated cost of the damage early. It wasn't clear how many vehicles were in the lot at the time the fire broke out, but there appeared to be dozens of cars, trucks and motorcycles, along with ATVs, parked on the pier area. NYPD officials said the vehicles included some historic ones as well as hundreds of e-bikes and motorcycles, though a full inventory needed to be conducted to determine what was in the warehouse at the time of the fire.
Biological and DNA evidence from past crimes, including burglaries and shootings -- some of it going back 20 or 30 years -- was kept at the location, the NYPD said. The evidence is linked to cold cases, stored in barrels made of highly flammable cardboard.
Cars linked to high-profile police murders, like the squad car Officer Ed Bryne was killed in back in 1988 and the mobile unit where Officer Miosotis Familia was killed in 2017, were at the facility.
"I would estimate that most of the contents are damaged by fire just based on the amount of fire that we know is," Hodgens said.
Sandy property evidence was there as well. Rape kits, however, were not stored at that facility. Police plan to do a full accounting of the contents to determine if anything can be salvaged, and the extent of the overall damage, but the deep-seated volume of the fire, the building structure and limited access are problematic, officials say.
"This is very serious and damaging fire. We won’t know the magnitude until we see the invoice to see what was in there and see what we can salvage," said NYPD Chief Joseph Maddrey.
Former NYPD Chief of Department Terry Monahan said that while much was potentially lost in the fire, "it shouldn’t have much of an impact on anything current. But there could be a case here or there that a defense attorney decides to reopen and that evidence will no longer be available."
The FDNY used fire boats as part of its firefighting effort during the worst of the fire -- and top fire department officials say drones will be used in the coming days to identify any hard-to-see hotspots. The fire continued to burn well into Tuesday night, and officials said the flames could continue to burn for days.
The city's Office of Emergency Management advised people in the area close their windows to limit smoke exposure. Traffic delays mounted in the area through the morning.
Chopper 4 was over the scene through some of the most ferocious fire, hovering over a row of dirt bikes at one point as a nearby pickup truck burst into fire. The lot appears to be the same one where NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell and Mayor Eric Adams crushed illegal dirt bikes as part of a crackdown this summer.
Erie Basin is one of several lots the NYPD uses to store vehicles that have been seized for reasons other than parking violations. Those might include the arrest of the vehicle owner, investigative purposes or legal reasons, the city says.
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) New York branch responded to assist. While the fire raged, the thick black smoke was visible from Brooklyn, Manhattan and New Jersey.
